Caterpillar Soup

The Truth Inside the Cocoon

For so many years, I didn’t really understand what happened inside a cocoon. I thought caterpillars simply grew wings and became butterflies – that the body of the caterpillar somehow morphed into the butterfly’s form.

It wasn’t until my late thirties that I learned the truth: inside the cocoon, the caterpillar breaks down completely. It dissolves into a kind of caterpillar soup. Then, from that mess, those cells reform into something new – the butterfly. The essence is the same, but its shape and purpose have changed. The butterfly doesn’t come out until it’s ready. The messy middle doesn’t last forever, but it’s important. It’s preparing the way for what comes next.

When I first discovered that, the image struck me deeply. It felt like a perfect description of matrescence – the process of becoming a mother – and of what I’d experienced myself.

A Word for What I Was Living Through

Matrescence, a term coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s, describes the transformation women go through in motherhood. It begins even before we give birth – sometimes the moment we first consider having a child. It continues through pregnancy, birth, and beyond: raising our children, subsequent children, facing empty nests, or becoming grandmothers.

Each stage reshapes us. It shifts our identity, our values, our sense of self.

I didn’t learn the term matrescence until my eldest child turned seven. But once I did, it made so much sense. It gave a name to something I’d been living through but couldn’t explain – the quiet, disorienting transformation of motherhood.

Like adolescence, matrescence is universal – and yet deeply individual, with no single timeline or path. We experience changes physically, hormonally, emotionally. It impacts us socially and economically. Just as a child developing into an adult experiences changes in all these different parts of their life, so too is every part of us affected by motherhood.

The Caterpillar Soup Stage

We often talk about motherhood as joy-filled, with challenges sprinkled throughout. But for me, it felt like the opposite: challenge after challenge, with moments of joy I clung to. Soon after my second child was born, something inside me shifted in a way I couldn’t undo. With the insight I now have into my ADHD, I can see how the intensity of parenting – the sensory overload, the multitasking, the endless expectations – overwhelmed me. My masking for others increased, but I no longer recognised myself.

I remember thinking, Is this it? Is this who I am now?

I felt like I’d lost the spark I used to have. I couldn’t find the joy or peace I once knew in the everyday. I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this – but it was too late to change anything. I had two (later, three) children who needed me. So, I kept going. I survived. I waited and hoped that someday I would feel better.

Now, I see it differently. I was in the cocoon. I had become Caterpillar Soup. My essence – the deep, true parts of me – were still there, but I was being reshaped. Everything felt unrecognisable, but the process was doing what it needed to do.

I didn’t know what my life would look like on the other side, but I had to trust that I wouldn’t stay in that soup forever. I had to trust the roots of my faith, my values, my younger self – that something solid still existed underneath the mess.

And slowly, I changed. My cells began to form something new. I emerged.

I’m still me – just like the butterfly is still made from the same essence as the caterpillar. But I’m different now. Stronger. Softer in some ways. And I carry the memory of Caterpillar Soup with me, so that I can offer hope to other mothers in that stage.

To the Mothers in the Middle

If that’s you – if you’re in the messy middle – I want you to know: this is not the end. This is not brokenness. This is transformation. You are becoming something even more beautiful than you were before.

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Trust

My Journey, Part 1